Dir. Dominic Savage, 2005, UK, 86 mins
Cast: Samina Awan, Thomas Hudson, Was Zakir, Nichola Burley
Review by Lorna Allen
‘’Have heart my dear, we’re bound to be afraid, even if it’s just for a few days – making up for all this mess.’’
These lyrics from Snow Patrol’s melodic anthem Run neatly encapsulate the mixed emotions and trepidation which the young star-crossed lovers of Love + Hate experience and struggle against, and it’s hardly surprising since the song which launched the Northern Irish quintet to stardom was commissioned especially by BAFTA-winning filmmaker Dominic Savage for his latest film.
Savage, best known until now for his Cutting Edge documentaries on Channel 4, gives the age-old Romeo and Juliet premise a working-class, Northern England, realist overhaul in his latest film, complete with a cast of relatively inexperienced young actors, improvised performances and dreary Lancashire backdrop.
Seventeen year old Naseema (Samina Awan) lands a job at a Discount Wallpaper store in an unspecified Northern town, which incidentally seems devoid of customers. She immediately hits it off with her female workmate Michelle (Nichola Burley), who instantly finds common ground with Naseema despite their racial differences (Naseema is an Asian Muslim), but hits a brick wall when she tries to enter into idle chit-chat with male colleague Adam (Thomas Hudson). His hostility towards Naseema is evident from the get-go and it soon becomes clear that Adam may just possibly be a future BNP voter, if you get my drift. Adam’s attitude is soon ‘explained’ for want of a better word, when we see that the major influences in his life are his older brother Sean (Ryan Leslie) – a lout in a suit who readily beats up one of his friends when he declares that he finds Asian girls attractive - and a bitter mother who resents an Asian-backed rival tanning store opening near her own. Two tanning salons in one street and yet nobody is buying wallpaper?
Predictably, Adam’s initial hostility towards Naseema is complicated by the growing attraction he feels for her, which is mutually felt, and soon the pair enter into a clandestine relationship. The whole situation is complicated further by yet another secret affair – between Naseema’s more worldly-wise (and somewhat tarty) friend and Naseema’s older brother Yousif (Was Zakir) who hypocritically isn’t exactly in favour of mixed-race relationships either, and who works with said young lady’s father in a local factory. When Naseema’s taxi-driving father is beat up by her beau’s friends, it becomes very clear that this whole messy, incestuous situation can only end in tears.
The film is obviously about racism but it also delves into that illusion-shattering phase of adolescence when we discover that our elders don’t always know or act any better than ourselves. Naseema and Adam are both products of their upbringings in families and a society that have not learned to integrate and evolve with the times.
Overall, this is a very enjoyable, if rather dark and uneasy, film, not least because of the standout performances from Hudson and Awan. Awan, in particular, inhabits her role like a second skin and simultaneously manages to emote vulnerability and inner strength and composure – she yearns to one day move away and have her own business. The heartfelt music, featuring a fantastic introspective soundtrack by Keane, Snow Patrol and Ian Brown, fits the chosen moods in each scene perfectly, and the bleak townscape of cobbled streets, graffitied walls and dilapidated buildings increases the sense of claustrophobia that seems to be suffocating the young lovers.
On the downside, there is an underlying sense in Love + Hate of having seen all of this before, and the many coincidences and too-close connections make the narrative seem unconvincing and exceedingly contrived for a serious drama to carry off without severely suspending disbelief. In a town which is reportedly patterned on Burnley, with in excess of 5,000 people of South Asian descent (mainly Pakistani and Bangladeshi), it would seem like Naseema and her relatives make up the only Asian family in this particular town.
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